Thursday, April 30, 2015

Extract: "The domain name registrar AlpNames.com which initially gave away around 50,000 free .Science domain and has been selling .Science domain names for $.49 since, has over an 87% market share at the registrar level for .Science with almost 195,000 domains and .Science represents over 95% of all of AlpNames.com new gTLD registrations".

Extract: "General availability (GA) for online pharmacies on a first-come, first-served basis will then begin on June 3, 2015. This GA phase is for any member of the pharmacy community, as outlined in the Eligibility Requirements".

Extract: "West isn’t the only musician who has taken up domains in new gTLDs, albeit for different reasons. In March this year, it was widely reported that Taylor Swift registered her name in the .porn and .adult gTLDs. Microsoft sought defensive registrations, as did Virgin’s Richard Branson and club chain Stringfellows".

Extract: "Demys also reviewed statistics that reported that 95% of queries relating to trade mark-related terms in new gTLDs are not being followed through to a live registration and concluded that, even if the findings tend towards the optimistic, they firmly indicate that the TMCH is having the intended effect of dissuading web users from cybersquatting on registered marks".

Extract: "The domain name industry has been mistakenly obsessing over ownership of unique assets (legacy domain names as well as new gTLDs). A frequent selling spiel for legacy domain names sellers was that each name was unique, with no attention paid to actual or potential ownership values".

Extract: "More and more companies are beginning to launch their gTLDs and make them available online to their customers. Examples include French bank BNP Paribas, Australia’s Monash University and UK-based bookmaker William Hill".

Extract: "Past gTLD introductions have not seriously impacted .com’s dominance. The situation might be very different if new gTLDs offer innovative services that differentiate it from traditional ones in terms of the benefit achieved by the users. Such an offering might provide strong competition to .com, at least from the perspective of some niches or groups of users".

Extract: "The group, which made its name as a registry services provider (keeping a database of top level domains (TLDs) assigned by registrars - finished the year with three profitable operating divisions: registry services, registrar services and enterprise services".

Tuesday, April 28, 2015

Extract: "ICANN in its own argument had written to the IRP Panel administering the DCA Trust Vs ICANN IRP to indicate that its own witnesses mentioned in the IRP case, i.e. ICANN Board member, Mr. Chalaby, and former GAC Chair Ms. Dryden would not testify before the Panel".

Extract: "DotConnectAfrica (DCA) wanted to run the .africa registry, but it was blocked from doing so by ICANN's committee of government representatives. DCA has been tussling with ICANN ever since to get the decision overturned, which is why it wants to quiz the two officials – ICANN board member, Cherine Chalaby, and the former head of its Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC), Heather Dryden".

Extract: "Jeff Sass believes that the biggest opportunity for New gTLDs (specifically for the registries) is to focus on people and companies that have not started yet. The opportunity is to focus on the new entrepreneurs just entering the internet and starting their businesses".

Extract: "ICANN tried to bake in a backup plan for failed registries by requiring them to have a credit line in the event of failure. I think that’s a funny notion; if a TLD fails, who would really back its credit line?".

Extract: "The Angling Times, the best-selling weekly fishing newspaper of Great Britain, will be switching their primary URL to anglingtimes.fishing. Bauer Media has also claimed the premium namecarp.fishing, and has plans to use the name for an online hub for the carp fishing community".

Extract: "There might be domains that will be easy to identify as high quality, and these should be removed from your disavow file ASAP. For the remaining domains, the tactics listed below can help you make educated decisions about which domains to disavow, and which ones to keep".

Extract: "With the recent expansion of Internet domain names, obtaining arizona.vote and arizona.voto was a simple way to make it easier for people to find out information related to voting and elections in Arizona," said Secretary Reagan. "Our site provides comprehensive details on things such as voter registration, polling places, election dates, and what to bring with you to the polls. With these two memorable domains, we hope when people think about voting, they think arizona.vote".

Extract: "Rightside starts the Early Access phase for two domain names on Wednesday: .Video and .Sale. If you can wait one week until general availability you’ll pay about $15-$25 for .video domains and $20-$30 for .sale domains".

Complete question: "What is the business value of new GTLDs (generic top level domain names)? Would you choose a beautiful GTLD exactly reflecting your brand name and concept, or a less catchy and explicit '.com'?"

Extract: "There was a company called Saco that bought a .build in Landrush, and I actually went out and met with them because I was curious as to why they bought a .build. I sat down with the two founders of the company. They said there were 15 other Saco construction companies on the web and they saw .build as an opportunity to get the best name that was available to them and stand out from the crowd".

Monday, April 27, 2015

Extract: "With the sale of .stream to Famous Four Media, ICANN has completed the sale of rights to new dot-word TLDs, The Register reports. Four other new gTLDs were resolved in the past week, all through private auctions as .stream was, however ICANN completes the process having raised $59 million from the 13 domains that sold through its public process".

Extract: "Interestedly just a couple of months ago Walmart came out against the “Anti-LGBT Bill“, a piece of legislation in Arkansas where Walmart is headquartered that “opponents say sanctions discrimination against gays and lesbians".

Thursday, April 23, 2015

Extract: "Whilst there may be a groundswell of support for a dotEngland gTLD, the question comes down to one of politics. Will any future Government have the political balls to back a move to promote an element of national identity that in many other ways it’s chosen to dumb down"?

Extract: "The largest single public amount paid was the $25m Google shelled out for the most popular name of the entire process: dot-app. That may also have been the largest single amount for any gTLD, although it's worth bearing in mind that the private auctions for .blog, .news, .book and others may have raised similar amounts of money".

Extract: "If you’re a small business or consumer, you may have seen or heard something about new domain extensions and be wondering "why should I care?" It’s a fair question, particularly in light of all the press about .SUCKS and .PORN capturing concerns and dollars from celebrities. I can give you a lot of reasons why you should care about these new domains, but let me tell you a story first".

Extract: "During the recent sunrise and landrush phases of the launch, almost 800 .POKER names were registered, representing many global poker leaders such as poker community PocketFives and poker news site PokerNews".

Tuesday, April 21, 2015

Extract: "One indicator of success is based on information derived from a secondary market for second-level domains: prices and transactions transparency. However, such a market can be a double-edged sword. It provides prices that reflect transaction volumes, who is buying and selling, and the average expectation of market participants as to what various domain names are worth".

Extract: "It’s interesting to compare the two domains. Both are world cities and major financial centers. Yet there’s a big difference in eligibility for these domains. Anyone can register a .London domain; .NYC is restricted to residents and business owners in the city".

Extract: "I’ve also noticed recently that it registered a bunch of generic or descriptive terms under new TLDs last year that were originally registered under Mark Monitor’s DNStinations. The whois records are slowly shifting to Amazon.com, unveiling more and more domains".

Extract: "HEXONET recently had the opportunity to conduct an interview with Top Level Design's Andrew Merriam, Business Development Director. We would like to thank Andrew for taking the time to share his thoughts and insights on .design".

Extract: "For several reasons, Driftaway.Coffee was a smart choice as far as the internet is concerned. To start with, it was available. It was also short, helped with our URL maps and other technical aspects of running a website".

Extract: "This site has been set up to help guide users on the most efficient way to raise this issue with websites, companies and software vendors. At the same time, this by documenting our collective support in a single location we can gain a voice to ensure companies proactively support the new gTLDs".

Saturday, April 18, 2015

Extract: "ICANN’s approval of the .sucks gTLD has not gone unnoticed. Specifically, former Senator Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, who chaired the Senate Commerce Committee, spoke out against ICANN’s approval of the gTLD, saying that the ownership of .sucks acts as “little more than a predatory shakedown scheme.” Senator Rockefeller further explained that “… any potential this gTLD might have to increase choice or competition in the domain name space is overwhelmed by the ways it will be used to unfairly defame individuals, nonprofit organizations, and businesses".

Extract: "As we have noted in earlier posts, large brands like Marriott International and luxury fashion brand Chloé have already launched their “nic” pages (link to blog on Marriott), the first step to launching more content across their branded top-top level domains".

Extract: "On another note .Science which was released about a month ago by Famous Four Media, now has skyrocketed to the 6th most registered new gTLD’s (actually number 5 if you disregard the IDN of 网址 (xn--ses554g) which has about 350,000 registry owned domains) with over 118,000 registrations".

Friday, April 17, 2015

Extract: "The $60m (£40m) – or $58,819,832 to be precise – was raised from organizations competing to set up registries for new generic top-level domains like .ping ($1.5m), .vip ($3m) and .app ($25m). (These are the public ICANN-run auctions; companies could choose to fight over dot-words in private without ICANN".

On May 18th .BANK will open its TMCH Sunrise Period. To support this TLD, the TMCH is hosting 3 webinars to inform trademark holders.

BANK is a trusted, verified, more secure and easily identifiable space on the Internet for the global banking community and the customers it serves. The .BANK gTLD has enhanced Security Requirements that exceed that of most existing and new gTLDs. In addition, it opens up much needed real estate on the Internet, providing new marketing and branding opportunities.

During these webinars Craig Schwartz, Managing Director of fTLD Registry Services, LLC will detail how banks can engage with his TLD.

The webinars are free and open for TMCH Agents and Holders.Register to receive connect credentials.

Extract: "...today we’re updating the algorithms that display URLs in the search results to better reflect the names of websites, using the real-world name of the site instead of the domain name, and the URL structure of the sites in a breadcrumbs-like format".

Extract: "This study relies for a major part on a methodology for measuring the performance of TLDs developed by the The Afnic Market Research Team, a methodology that starts making reference in an european level".

Extract: "I knew .CLUB would kick ass in it’s first year but with over 200,000 registrations and the title as the #1 new domain extension on Go Daddy I have to say I am impressed, so impressed I couldn’t go another day without writing this post".

Wednesday, April 15, 2015

Extract: "Historically the only choice was a small number of three-letter TLDs such as .com and .org or a two-letter country-code top-level domain such as .uk or .nl. As of mid-January 2015, ntldstats.com(which provides a breakdown of new gTLD statistics) reported a total of more than four million new gTLD domains registered. Registration of your trademarks with ICANN’s Trademark Clearinghouse will not block registration by third parties, but will give early warning in the event that a registration is made in one of the new TLDs that exactly matches your trademark".

Extract: "...you cannot blame only the registries for divisiveness. This conflict is fueled by pundits and domainers on both sides of the debate, who have self interest in maintaining their positions, which are not necessarily based on analytics".

Extract: "All of these factors lead to “domain fatigue.” Brand managers feel that it takes too much time, effort and money to figure out how, when, and which TLDs to register their marks in. Even though there are free resources like nTLD Stats and the Domain Check Tool to help navigate new TLD launch and domain name information, many brands have simply given up".

Extract: "Brik is Denver’s newest wine bar located in the Wyman Historic District on Colfax and York. The owner, Travis Gee, eloquently bridges the gap between Old World and New World concepts by combining his travels, love of wine and personal experiences under one roof".

Extract: "When we last left ChatCenter it was running on the URL chatcenter.me and was aimed at creating a one-stop spot for chatting. Now, a few months later, it has moved from a freemium product and gone full software as a service. It will offer $1.99 chat accounts so businesses can jibber jabber with customers via an embeddable widget and it has also snagged the Chat.Center. What a difference a quarter makes".

Extract: "Amazon and Flickr appeared to have invested significantly in the new programme, registering key terms such as ‘Kindle’ and ‘Fire’ in unrelated new gTLDs such as .singles, .estate and .plumbing. Fortunately, they soon saw that such a defensive policy was in no-one’s interest and started looking at the DPML as the keystone in their defensive policy".